The Cooper-Cooper Alliance
by erburnham02
Summary: Sheldon Cooper, like everyone else in his family, thought Missy Cooper only had one child - a baby boy. But when she turns up at his doors with Margaret Ann, a brilliant young biophysicist who seems to take after her uncle, he is proved wrong for once. Will his nine-year-old niece win his heart in the three weeks she is due to stay with him? Will Sheldon win hers?
1. The Niece Situation

In a small two-bedroom apartment in Pasadena, California, USA, three physicists, an engineer, a neurobiologist, a microbiologist and an actress were eating Indian food. The astrophysicist, whose name was Rajesh Koothrappali, was loudly complaining about the quality; and the theoretical physicist, Sheldon Cooper, was patiently explaining to him that the reason it was so awful was that his roommate Leonard Hofstadter had failed once again to get the correct brand of rice to have with it.

The actress, Penny, and her friends Amy and Bernadette (the neurobiologist and microbiologist) were eating in a sort of wearied silence, whilst the engineer Howard Wolowitz had retired to the kitchenette to call his mother. All in all, a pretty normal Wednesday afternoon for the seven friends.

That was until there was a loud knock on the door.

Sheldon got up from his favourite seat, and opened the door slightly cautiously. There on the other side stood his pretty twin sister Missy Cooper, who was holding a small girl by the wrist.

"Hi, Shelly!" she announced in her strong Texan accent.

"Well, Missy, this is a surprise," said Sheldon slightly warily.

"There's something I've always been meaning to tell ya," she began, "but I guess I just never got round to it. This here's ma daughter Margaret Ann."

"Your... daughter?"

"That's right, and, well, she just didn't fit in back in Galveston, so I thought she could come and stay with you for a bit, huh?"

"Wait, wait, hold on! Where's the email notifying me of a family member coming to visit? Where's the form signed by said member to approve of the roommate agreement?"

"Listen, Shelly, I've got her brother to take care of. If you don't look after her for three damn weeks you and me are going to go round and round like we did when we were kids, okay? You and her can talk about all that rocket science stuff! Oh, and she starts at the university on Monday!"

Missy clacked down the stairs in her high heels, leaving Sheldon speechless, looking down at his niece.

"Hello...?" he said eventually.

"Hi, Uncle Shelly. I read your paper on holographic superfluidity and superconductivity! It was great! But there was just one small flaw... graphene has a hexagonal structure, therefore it has a cone-like band structure. I drew a diagram of it for you on the train. Do you want to see?"

Sheldon stared at her. "I may as well, though if you take after your mother it is unlikely to be much good. Come inside."

Margaret followed her uncle into the living room of his apartment. Leonard, Penny, Rajesh, Howard, Amy and Bernadette looked at her with no little surprise.

"Hi," she said shyly. "I'm Dr. Margaret Ann Cooper."

Sheldon turned around to look at his friends, the shock still evident in his face. "Apparently this is my niece. And... did you just say Doctor?"

"I got my PhD last month, Uncle Shelly."

Penny was the first to break the silence. "Aww! She is adorable!"

She actually kind of was. Her long, curly, dark hair, inherited from her mother, was tied up in pigtails. She was quite plump and her dimples were very cute. Her glasses were a little too big for her face and gave her an earnest, curious expression. She couldn't have been more than ten years old.

"Wait, is she going to stay with us?" asked Leonard incredulously.

"Well, at first I was inclined to believe my sister was telling me stories, but no. She will be our temporary roommate for...three weeks was it?"

"He's taking this too well," Raj whispered to Howard. "Any minute now..."

Sheldon collapsed on the floor in a dead faint.


	2. The Couch Seat Antagonism

When Sheldon came to, he was surrounded by a group of his friends and one child who was not quite so familiar. But it never took long for Sheldon's mental faculties to be restored to full working condition, and his eidetic memory to return. Within four or five seconds, he remembered the child perfectly.

His niece.

His niece? How come Missy never told him she had given birth before she, and therefore they, were even old enough to drink? This was a betrayal of his trust.

However, he also remembered that the child had given a pretty intelligent comment on the structure of graphene. She couldn't be... what he had once referred to as Sheldon 2.0? It was certainly possible.

All these thoughts went through Sheldon's head as he looked up at the faces above him. Then he saw the child's (Margaret Ann's?) lip begin to tremble. Oh no. She was going to cry. He shut his eyes again, hoping to pretend that he had fainted, but fooling nobody.

"Uncle Shelly?" she said, her voice wobbly. "Are you okay?"

Sheldon stared in horror at her, then remembered what one does when one is faced with an upset person. One offers them a hot beverage, of course.

He raised himself up to a sitting position, and awkwardly patted her on the back. "There, there..." he murmured. "Would you like hot chocolate? Tea?"

"Do you have marshmallows?" she sniffed.

"Yes," he replied truthfully. "But there are only seven left and I was saving them for myself." Then Sheldon felt a drop of water, a teardrop, land on his shoulder. He froze. "Alright, alright, you may have the marshmallows!"

Margaret smiled and hugged him. He remained frozen, sat on the floor, while his traitorous friends looked on with barely concealed expressions of mirth. Did the child realise how unhygienic this was? He untangled himself from her embrace and practically ran to the kitchenette, starting to wash his hands.

For a moment, his friends and Margaret were silent. Then Bernadette, experienced with looking after small children, took Margaret's hand. Margaret was just a few inches shorter than her, being quite tall like Sheldon and Missy.

"Hi!" she smiled. "I'm Bernadette! Do you want me to call you Margaret Ann?"

The girl looked at her trustingly. "You can call me plain Margaret. What do you do?"

"I'm a microbiologist, actually," she replied.

Margaret took a good look at her. "How old are you?"

Bernadette was still smiling. "It's not polite to ask a lady her age!" she said through gritted teeth. Her patience was starting to wear.

"Oh!" Margaret said. "...I'm nine."

"Well, whoopee for you!"

"I'm a biophysicist and I like Star Trek and my favourite character is Spock, what about you?"

"Well, I don't like Star Trek, so go and talk to someone who does!" she replied, her smile starting to look forced.

Bernadette propelled Margaret towards where the rest of the little group, minus Sheldon, were standing.

"So," Howard said after a short silence, "you like magic?"

"No," replied Margaret. "It's boring."

Penny spoke up. "So, what do you like?"

"I like a great deal of things. I like my work, my video games, and Star Trek, and baby kittens, and playing dress-up."

"Playing dress-up? Well, I guess that's something you two have in common!" quipped Howard, who was looking a bit disgruntled.

"Hey, I do not play dress-up! I try on clothes like a normal adult!"

Soon a full-on battle was being waged over Margaret's head. She knew she had to distract them somehow. She had heard about all of Uncle Shelly's idiosyncrasies from her mom, some of which matched her own. And she knew which one he would fight to the last to defend.

She went and sat on the right-hand seat of the couch. "This is my spot," she announced.

The arguing adults turned round to look at her in stupefaction. And that very moment, Sheldon returned with a mug of cocoa, and nearly dropped it on the floor.

He would never get along with this child, family or no family.


	3. The Whiteboard Disagreement

_Author's Note: Okay, guys, I am really sorry I haven't updated in *metaphorically* forever, so to make up I'm posting two chapters at once. Really, really sorry._

-chapter3-

Sheldon looked at the nine-year-old witheringly. "That's my spot."

"No. It's mine," she blurted out before she could stop herself. This spot seemed to be the best in the lounge – not too warm, not too draughty, facing the television at an angle that would discourage conversation.

Margaret had faced bullies in the playground who were intimidated by her intelligence. She had faced angry students at the University of East Texas who didn't want her to use their facilities. She had faced menacing professors who thought she wasn't deserving of her honorary doctorate. But stronger, older people than Margaret Ann Cooper had quailed under Sheldon Cooper's look when you sat in his spot.

"In the winter that seat is close enough to the radiator to remain warm and yet not so close as to cause perspiration. In the summer it's directly in the path of a cross breeze created by opening windows there and there. It faces the television at an angle that is neither direct, thus discouraging conversation, nor so far wide as to create a parallax. Plus, this is my apartment and you have not yet signed the roommate agreement, so what I say, goes."

Margaret stuck her bottom lip out, and then suddenly grinned and jumped up. "So you agree that once I've signed your 'roommate agreement' I may have this as my spot? Awesome. I'm in."

Sheldon spluttered. "That is not what I meant at all!"

"Is so. It's logical, yeah?" Margaret did the Vulcan hand sign at him and smiled sweetly.

Sheldon twitched for a few seconds in discomfort, trying to find a loophole.

"Or I suppose she could just sit on your lap," Penny told him, trying not to laugh.

Sheldon sighed. "I'm sorry, but I cannot allow this. However, you may sit anywhere else in the apartment." Though he was reluctant to defy logic, his spot was the single point of consistency in an ever-changing world.

"Oh well, it was worth a try. Where is this roommate agreement?"

Sheldon thankfully dashed off to his room and brought a stack of paper. "It's here."

"Sheldon, she's a kid. How is she supposed to get through that?" Amy reasoned.

"This is Sheldon 2.0," he answered.

"No, I prefer Margaret 1.0," she said, working through the stack at top speed. "Um, done. Wrong grammar on pages 8, 13, 27 and 35, typos on pages 2, 10, 11, 48 and 51."

Sheldon snatched it from her. "Now, look here...!"

He stared blankly at page 2.

Raj handed Howard five dollars and whispered in his ear. Howard grinned and pocketed the money.

Penny suddenly snapped her fingers. "Hey, what do the kid and Doctor Whackadoodle have in common? They both haven't hit puberty yet."

Margaret turned to her uncle, her eyes wide behind her glasses and her face lit up with interest. "Is that true? Is it? Really? That's so cool, I want to do tests on you, can I please, please, please?"

"No!" shouted Sheldon just at the same time as everyone else shouted "Yes!"

Margaret moved to Sheldon's whiteboard, rubbed everything off and started to write furiously. Sheldon rushed to her and took the pen away.

"What?" asked the small biophysicist innocently. "It was all wrong anyway."

"Ohh-kay, I'm leaving now?" Penny said, quickly walking towards the door. Bernadette and Amy followed her, and Howard tried to but was pushed away by Penny with a cry of, "No way are you coming into my apartment!"

Margaret wished she had never left Texas.


	4. The Winkle Collusion

Margaret woke up to someone rapping three times on the coffee table next to where she lay.

Knock, knock, knock. "Margaret Ann." Knock, knock, knock. "Margaret Ann." Knock, knock, knock. "Margaret Ann."

She poked her head up from under the covers arranged on the brown leather couch and saw her Uncle Shelly.

"I am going to watch Doctor Who now," he said slightly awkwardly.

"Oh," she replied. "May I watch it with you?"

"You may."

Sheldon switched on BBC America and they watched an episode until Leonard arrived from his bedroom, stretching and yawning.

"Good morning, Doctor Hofstadter," Margaret greeted him politely. "Guess what, I found _five_ unsound theories in this episode."

"Great," he said unenthusiastically.

"Yes it is, isn't it?" she beamed.

"That was sarcasm," Sheldon told her knowingly. She gazed up at him with a look of hero-worship that her uncle found he really didn't mind.

"Oh, and guess what, I'm starting work at the California Institute of Technology today!" she said in great excitement. "Will you drive me, Uncle Shelly?"

"Don't ask 'Uncle Shelly' to drive you," Leonard smirked. "He's –"

"I'm too evolved," Sheldon interrupted.

"Sure you are."

-chapter4-

Sheldon shepherded Margaret to Dr. Gablehauser's office.

"Dr. Cooper, if Dr. Winkle has called you 'dumbass' again, I really don't think –" He looked up. "Ah, you must be the young Cooper! Pleased to meet you!"

"Pleased to meet you, Dr. Gablehauser! Do I get my office now?"

He was slightly thrown by her outspokenness. "Of course, you are working on –"

"Developing Brillouin's negentropy principle of information," she trilled.

"So you will be sharing a laboratory with Leslie Winkle and George Da –"

This time it was Sheldon who interrupted him. "No, no, no! You can't expect a child of her age to share a lab with Leslie Winkle!"

"I'm afraid I can, and I do," Dr Gablehauser smiled thinly. He pressed a button on his intercom. "Joséfina, please call Dr. Winkle and tell her to come up here and escort the young Dr. Cooper to her new lab?"

A Spanish accented "Si, Dr. Gablehauser" came over the speaker.

Margaret looked up at Sheldon, her eyes wide. "Uncle Shelly, is that lady real awful?"

"I'm afraid she is – and real_ly _awful, if you please," Sheldon corrected.

Margaret shifted her gaze to the now-smirking dean. "Dr. Gablehauser, I'd rather do my work in peace and quiet!"

"Dr. Cooper, don't forget that I have the power to dismiss you at any time, before you have even started work!" the man thundered.

Margaret burst into tears. Just then, Leslie Winkle came through the door.

"Dr. Gablehauser, Dr. Dumbass, kid," she nodded at them. Sheldon and Margaret both bristled.

"Okay, yeah, I get it. Don't call him Dr. Dumbass. Just Dumbass, then."

Dr. Gablehauser waved his hand at her in a gesture of dismissal. She took Margaret Ann by the hand and steered her towards the door.

"I just hope you're not as dumb as your uncle. That would really be unfortunate."

Margaret cried quietly all the way down the corridor.

"Hab SoSlI Quch!" Sheldon said angrily to Dr. Gablehauser, turned on his heel and went out of the room muttering to himself.

"Your mother has a smooth forehead? Really...?" the dean said to himself, allowing himself a small, private smile. He wasn't as serious as everyone thought he was...

_Author's Note: So Leslie Winkle is going to be the antagonist in this story. Dr. Gablehauser could go either way._


End file.
